Wednesday, 5 April 2017

Westminster and the Islamic Connection – Areo Magazine

Christiane Amanpour on CNN this morning in an interview with Baroness Warsi happened to mention Masood, "the Westminster Terrorist", saying that "we still don't know what motivated him". Oh yes, we do! I yelled at the screen. It's in the Koran. It's the doctrines of Islam (The "Trinity of Islam"). I've said similar things countless times over the years. And so have reliable observers like Sam Harris.

Here in this post from Areo, a new website I've been following lately courtesy of Professor Jerry Coyne, on his "Why Evolution is True" website, is one of the best and clearest expositions of what it that motivates Islamic terrorists. In short: Islamic doctrine. Not grievances about western foreign policy. (Of course, grievances are a part of it. But the Islamists/jihadists make it clear that even if all the grievances were resolved, they'd still hate and attack us).

This utter confusion and determined ignorance among westerners as to what constitutes Islam and what inspires jihadists, is presumably the reason why a Muslim attacking civilians with a car in accordance with Islamic State directives and having a "clear interest in jihad", has the police and public so mystified as to his motives. Speaking on the attack, Metropolitan police commissioner Neil Basu said the following:

"We must all accept that there is a possibility we will never understand why he did this. That understanding may have died with him."

The understanding of his motives did not die with Masood. It died long before. It died the moment we decided as a society that we would repeatedly treat attacks of this kind with platitudes and self-delusion and willful ignorance, in preference to confronting the ideology that inspires them. And as such, it seems that our collective instinct for self-preservation has died with it.

"...it is the duty of those who have accepted Islam to strive unceasingly to convert or subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state."

-- Bernard Lewis, renowned historian of Islam and the Middle East, in The Political Language of Islam, p72-3.

In other words:

"Islam is unique among religions of the world in having a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers."